Monday, December 17, 2018

In Canada, they don't have the Obamacare Mandate. It's just universal care and the mandate is taxes

People grumbled about the Obamacare mandate that everyone had to have insurance. Mandating a purchase was thought to be unconstitutional.

In Canada, they don't have the mandate, they just call it a tax. In Canada, the taxes are a bit higher, but everyone gets health coverage. It's a system of universal coverage. Single payer, for the most part. Down here it looked like people were being forced to buy a product they didn't want because it was called a premium that's paid to private companies. In Canada, it's a tax.

In both countries, the system works best if it's pretty much universal. That's because when people are given a choice, they wait till they are sick or high risk to buy insurance. This drives up the premiums.

Without the mandate, Obamacare becomes more unstable and the recent court decision, in Texas, is attempting to scrap the whole program. That means pulling the plug on millions of people. Even hardened Republicans, including Trump himself, must realize that pulling the plug is really "staring right into the abyss."

That is why even Trump says Obamacare will keep going until this can get sorted out. He wants a "replacement for Obamacare." Problem is there's probably no way around the need for higher income people to pay more so lower income people can still afford healthcare. This is especially true with the income gap being so high in USA.

The only other alternatives, that I see, would be figuring out how to drastically reduce the cost of healthcare. If people, on average, were healthier and used the system less often, and/or if the system wasn't so expensive, it might work. I don't see the politicians talking that much about strategies for accomplishing that.

How about my bicycling lifestyle, but I realize that doesn't work for everyone. My health is, most likely, a combination of choice and luck. To be honest, luck is part of the equation. A friend of mine attributes his health, in part, to choosing good grandparents. "Choosing?" The genetic lottery.